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This story was printed from Anchordesk,
located at http://review.zdnet.com/AnchorDesk/.
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Why I love Apple's new iLife
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| By David Coursey: Executive Editor, AnchorDesk |
| Thursday, February 5, 2004 |
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Apple's new iLife '04 package, introduced last month at Macworld, arrived on my desk a few days ago. And, while I'm not a musician and don't play one on television, I have been having a lot of fun with GarageBand.
THIS SOFTWARE, the flagship of this year's iLife upgrade, is essentially a recording studio in a $49 box; that box also happens to include improved versions of iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD. Which makes this perhaps the best $50 you could spend on software right now--presuming, of course, you already have a Mac to run it.
If you don't, fear not: Every new Mac comes with the software, so you can buy a new computer and save $50 at the same time. OK, it's not really saving money, but I was looking to give you a good excuse to write a check down at your local Apple store.
When I call GarageBand a "recording studio in a box" (and I'm not the first to do so), you shouldn't think just about sound recording and editing, but also include all the other things you'd find in a modern recording studio, including musicians and instruments.
People like me--that is, those with no musical talent--can create songs from GarageBand's collection of 1,100 "loops," or short pieces of music recorded by professional musicians using a variety of instruments and sound effects tools.
IT'S PROBABLY easiest to create hip-hop tracks using the loops, but given enough time, I'm sure you could create something you'd be happy to play for friends regardless of their musical taste. GarageBand songs can be exported to iTunes and burned onto a CD or dubbed onto an iPod.
Think of loops as musical Lego blocks and you've got the idea. This will help you understand that while some people can build a reasonable facsimile of the U.S. capitol or the Eiffel Tower from Legos, most of us will be lucky just not to step barefoot onto a lost Lego block buried in the carpet when we're done.
Seriously, if you play around with GarageBand and the loops long enough, you can have a pretty fun time. You can change tempo, transpose the loops into a different key, make them play longer or shorter, louder or more quietly. You just can't change what the instruments are actually playing, which is fair enough for people who can't play an instrument themselves.
Those who do can plug a keyboard, guitar, other instrument, or a microphone into GarageBand. You can then record live to your hard drive, alas without much in the way of editing capabilities. Or you can use a MIDI keyboard and play any of the more than 175 sampled instruments. Touch the keys on your MIDI keyboard--available for less than $100--and out of your Mac comes the sound of instruments you'd never learn to play yourself, like an entire string or horn section.
IF YOU'VE ALWAYS wanted to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" but lack the necessary finger dexterity to get past "Mary Had a Little Lamb," you'll be pleased to find that GarageBand comes to the rescue here, too. Just record the complicated tune at slow speed and GarageBand will play it back as fast as you want, but still in the proper key. All of a sudden you're a star--so long as you don't plan a live tour.
Actually, GarageBand has many times the power of the studio technology Brian Wilson used to create "Good Vibrations," Phil Spector used for his "Walls of Sound," or Michael B. Tretow used to create the world-famous ABBA sound. So what's keeping you from your date with destiny?
While GarageBand isn't as feature-rich as the professional digital studio packages, such as ProTools, and isn't even original as a consumer product (Windows has had a program called Acid for several years), it does put a big creative tool into the hands of people who otherwise would never enjoy one.
It won't be too many years before someone is accepting a Grammy with the words, "I started my career with GarageBand," or even, "I recorded this with GarageBand." Just wait and see.
Even if you're not a Mac user and never want to be, you should drop by an Apple store and see GarageBand in action.
AS FOR THE OTHER iApps in the new iLife, the changes are valuable but not incredible. iPhoto, for example, can now manage 25,000 photos per album without slowing down too terribly. That's a big improvement for a program that used to go into molasses mode when an album got up to 2,000 pics.
Likewise, iDVD has more templates for DVD creation than before and can now write up to two hours of very nice video onto a DVD, thanks to improved encoding technology. iMovie is also improved, though in nuts-and-bolts ways that aren't that useful to discuss here.
Like I said, nice but not incredible.
If you have a Mac and don't need GarageBand, I'd visit the Apple Web site and read some reviews of iLIfe before spending the money to upgrade. But if you have even the tiniest musical talent or ambition, GarageBand belongs on your Mac.
What do you think? Does GarageBand sound fun to you? Would you buy the new iLife to get it? TalkBack to me below!
